The GMO inspection was carried out by the Norwegian Directorate of Health on Tuesday 10 September at BIO’s premises. They were particularly interested in the live facilities (T55-1.floor), zebrafish lab and fly lab. In addition, the teaching lab in the B block, one laboratory in the B-building and several laboratories in the Bioblokken were shown during the inspection.
In general, we received good feedback on the information available in the HSE handbook, with clarified responsibilities and training of new students by using HSE safety pass. However, we did receive some discrepancies and remarks.
The Norwegian Directorate of Health pointed out that all research laboratories and instrument rooms in the A/B block and the 3rd floor Bioblokken have containment level 2. They therefore recommend that we scale down from this level to containment level 1, and only retain level 2 where necessary. This, in turn, will make it easier to fulfil the requirements set for the daily operation of the laboratories. It is important to work according to good microbiological practice, which means that it should be possible to decontaminate all areas of a laboratory. This means that personal belongings such as outerwear and bags should not be stored in the laboratory. This was registered as a discrepancy in the report. We would therefore ask everyone to respect and follow up on this and consider alternative places for outerwear.
BIO currently has relatively old authorizations for the contained use of GMOs (2004 and 2010), which must now be updated using a new registration tool at the Norwegian Directorate of Health (GMO database). The new data system requires the appointment room responsible people and not just one as we have had previously (head of department). We will therefore establish a system with more than one person in charge for a given area. This means that project managers who are to submit a notification for use of GMOs must contact the responsible person to gain access to the new registration system. In this way, we will have better control over which projects use GMOs and whether the work to be carried out corresponds to the approval for the rooms to be used in the project.